her with a cowhide till she begged for mercy. Jimmie had come home from
the still to find her writhing in passionate revolt. The boy had been
furious at his father; yet had admitted the substantial justice of the
punishment. Its wisdom he doubted. For he knew his sister to be stubborn
as old Clay himself, and he feared lest they drive her to the arms of Bad
Dave Roush.

"I reckon you was talkin' to yo'self, mebbe," he suggested.

"I reckon."

They walked home together along a path through the rhododendrons. The
long, slender legs of the girl moved rhythmically and her arms swung like
pendulums. Life in the open had given her the litheness and the grace of
a woodland creature. The mountain woman is cheated of her youth almost
before she has learned to enjoy it. But 'Lindy was still under eighteen.
Her warm vitality still denied the coming of a day when she would be a
sallow, angular snuff-chewer.

Within sight of the log cabin the girl lingered for a moment by the
sassafras bushes near the spring. Some deep craving for sympathy moved
her to alien speech. She turned upon him with an imperious, fierce
tenderness in her eyes.

"You'll never forgit me, Bud? No matter what happens, you'll--you'll not
hate me?"

Her unusual emotion embarrassed and a little alarmed him. "Oh, shucks!
They ain't anything goin' to happen, sis. What's ailin' you?"